Rosatom in search of partners for 49% stake

ISTANBUL (AA): Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom is in negotiations with both Turkish and foreign companies for a new partner to buy a 49 percent share in the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, Anton Dedusenko, deputy chairman of Akkuyu Joint Stock Company (JSC), said Tuesday.

Rosatom has been negotiating with a number of companies for over a year for a 49 percent share of the plant that is estimated to cost around $20 billion. However, no concrete agreement has yet been made. A Cengiz-Kolin-Kalyon consortium, which was in discussions with Rosatom, the plant’s major shareholder, failed to reach a final agreement and negotiations halted.

Dedusenko did not reveal the names of potential partner companies, but divulged that Rosatom has invested $10.1 billion – equivalent to Rosatom’s 51 percent share interest, the percentage share of the project that was stipulated in the Turkish-Russia intergovernmental agreement signed on May 12, 2010.

“This amount [$10.1 billion] will be enough for a certain amount of development in the project,” Dedusenko said.

The Akkuyu project started with this intergovernmental agreement, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin launched the construction of the plant via videoconference in April 2018.

Rosatom and participants will build the plant comprising four units, each of which has a capacity of 1,200 megawatts.

The plant will have a working life of 8,000 hours per year, and will produce 35 billion kilowatts of electricity at full capacity to meet about 10 percent of Turkey’s electricity needs. The plant has an operational date for the first reactor set for 2023, while the plant is expected to be up and running at full capacity by 2025.

“This amount will be enough for a certain amount of development at the project,” he said.

Dedusenko also shared that the Akkuyu JSC was granted a license for the 1st unit of the power plant in April 2018 and received limited permit for unit 2.

“We are in preparations to apply for the license for unit 3,” Dedusenko said, adding that as per the intergovernmental agreement, first electricity production should be realized in the seven years following the granting of the license.

However, “we are planning to take the first unit into operation earlier than this period,” he stated.

The Akkuyu project will employ around 9,000-10,000 after the 2020s, which will be the most intense period of the project, Dedusenko concluded.